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NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo

How many of you are doing NaNoWriMo this year? I did it last year, my first time ever, and I loved it. I won, which was exciting, and it inspired me to go back and start First Draft B of working!title Trentwood’s Orphan. I don’t have time to do it this year, which I’m sad about, but I’m being extra crazy and doing it again this year, to motivate me through the last half of my WIP. I started browsing the website and, not so surprisingly, I was sucked back in. I also want the following from their store: the “Can’t talk, noveling” mug and the 2007 t-shirt.

Now, as a fellow writer, I want to say the following to you NaNo-ers:

Don’t give up, even if you are already behind! You are a writer, no matter what you may think. You are doing the good thing by pushing yourself to achieve that goal of 50k words in 30 days. Don’t waste time on negativity, on thinking you might not finish, that you might not “win”. Anything you have on the page, whether it is crap or The Next Great Novel, is more than what you had before, and you should be proud! You should do the dance of triumph. You should crow the Xena yell. You should stand on the deck of a ship and shout to the heavens “I’m king/queen of the written word!”

So write that “shitty first draft” and revel in it for you are doing something that most people cannot do: You are challenging yourself. You have the persistence to keep going even when the Block chokes your imagination. If the Block has you in its throes, know that at least one person believes you can do it: Me. I know you have it in you to write that 1000+ words today. Don’t edit it, just write! Go wherever your imagination takes you, even if it makes your story fantastic and silly. Don’t worry about it, you can go back in December and change that paragraph, or page, or chapter.

The only one holding you back is yourself. We are often too hard, excusing in others what we despise in ourselves. Give yourself a break and rekindle your love of the written word. Be self-affirming, don’t waste your time thinking you can’t do it, just do it. It’s like that song once said:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mr In-Between.
No! Don’t mess with Mr In-Between.